


in a world of perpetual turmoil

by moodyreindeer



Category: Cloak & Dagger (TV 2018)
Genre: Canon Compliant, F/M, Light Angst, Mild Language, Pre-Relationship
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-06-14
Updated: 2018-06-14
Packaged: 2019-05-20 09:46:19
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,052
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/14892284
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/moodyreindeer/pseuds/moodyreindeer
Summary: There's Tyrone, and there's the rest of the world.For Tandy, that's the only distinction that matters.





	in a world of perpetual turmoil

**Author's Note:**

> yo guess who got emotionally fucked over by tandy and tyrone???
> 
> yup you guessed it.
> 
> there is no real plot, just a string of scattered thoughts i had on their relationship.

Tyrone is a terrifying thing. Not because of who he is - a dedicated athlete from a cushy home with parents that will actually miss him if he’s gone - or what he can do - find the darkness and bend it to his will. Tandy has met enough privileged people (even vaguely remembers what it was like to be one herself) that the effect they might’ve had on her has long since faded into a bitter resentment. Tandy doesn’t fear his power or his naivety of his strength; she is just as powerful and just as clueless, so the risk of them accidentally hurting each other is even.

What scares her is the flood of emotion she feels for him. It’s not love, not quite affection - it’s something more feral. _Animal._ It’s a territorial protectiveness, an ancestral instinct to keep him safe. She hasn’t felt anything this deep and gutting since the loss of her father turned her into a girl of stone.

She feels this deep and dark and ancient thing sitting in her chest, docile, sharpening it claws, waiting for something to sink its teeth into.

Tyrone walks into the church one evening, shoulders bunched around his ears, the strap of his backpack in a death grip. It’s May and stupidly humid, a suffocating fog hanging over New Orleans like an ominous overseer.

He won’t meet her eyes. He only does that when something’s wrong but he’s too polite to be blunt about it.

The creature in her chest begins to prowl.

“What is it?” she asks, her voice sharper than she means it to be. Tandy always seem to be a double-edged sword nowadays. She’s spent so long training herself to be sharp she’s forgotten what it’s like to be soft.

But for Tyrone, she’ll try.

Slowly, his proud head lifts.

The creature slashes it’s claws. The sound it makes is somewhere between a growl and howl; it tries to slip up her throat, but she chokes it down at the last minute.

“What the hell happened to your face?” 

Tyrone flinches as she walks closer. Undeterred, Tandy brings her hand up and, the gentlest her fingers have been in a long time, maps his injuries. His eye is tender and swollen, red in the aftermath of the hit - a punch, she guesses. The young bruise spreads to his temple, the echo of a fist. The skin of his bottom lip is rough on the pad of her finger. Blood dries around the wide split.

She can taste her fury. It’s a smoky, hard burn.

“Who?” 

Tyrone sighs. “T, don’t - ”

“Who?” she asks again, pulling her hand away. She steps back so she can look him in the eyes.

His feet scuffle against the hard concrete floor. “Some guys on the team got a little out of control.”

Tandy sucks in a breath. There are many things she wants to say in this moment, but all of them would only warrant a disapproving look from Tyrone.

One thought repeats, louder than the rest:

_I’ll kill them I’ll kill them I’ll kill them_

“What did you do?” 

He straightens, rolls back his shoulders and lifts his head. Already it’s a struggle to keep his left eye open, but stubbornly he does it. “I handled it.”

He keeps his gaze fixed on the wall behind her, just above her shoulder.

She frowns. “You ran.”

“I got a few hits in. Enough to stun them and buy some time.” She knows it’s true because he sounds miserable when he says it. Tyrone is new to this world, where passivity in the face of confrontation is no longer an option. He doesn’t wear it well - the violence bunches around him like a suit too big in the shoulders, too long in the sleeves.

“Shit.” She says it because it’s the only thing left to say.

Then she drags him over and forces him to sit still while she treats his face as best as she can. He hisses when she dabs a hem soaked in alcohol (whiskey, the cheap shit she drinks when she tells herself to she’s going to stop with the pills) against his lip.

They speak very little after that, but Tyrone doesn’t leave and Tandy doesn’t ask how long he’s going to stay. 

She knows he’s here for the night, until morning comes and he creeps away to his nice home, his kind parents, his good life, like nothing has changed.

* * *

Something’s coming. Something bigger than drugs and money. Something bigger than spoiled rich kids with too little brain and too much testosterone. Something bigger than addicts play acting as mothers and the phantom of drowned fathers.

It’s why they are what they became: Tandy and Tyrone. Tyrone and Tandy.

The dark and the light.

The cloak and the dagger.

They can both feel it coming, but separately they are weak. Tandy is used to the rush of adrenaline in the face of danger, used to the quick sweep of life-or-death decisions - fight or flight. She is so used to _flight_ that she forgot _fight_ was an option, that it was ever on the table. This is something she can’t outrun; if she tries, it will eat her alive.

Tyrone keeps her here - steadies the thrum in her bones, quiets the quake in her head as she looks on this pathetic little place of blood and death and violence and thinks, _why am I still here?_

It’s a stupid question. She knows the answer because he’s always holding her hand.

Tyrone is an ocean, a serene and mystical being when happy, a roaring and frothing thing when he’s angry. He is the _fight_ to her _flight_ \- his foamy waves ebbing at her, willing her to join him.

And she does. She will. Tandy knew she was in this - whatever _this_ may be - the first time their hands met without ricocheting them off the walls. 

There’s no going back. There’s no unknowing the power that courses in their veins. No unseeing the secrets of the light and the dark. 

As she looks at him, sometimes out of the corner of her eye, sometimes in depth when he is oblivious with sleep, she knows she wouldn’t have it any other way. 

They are divine and fearful things made to keep each other safe.

**Author's Note:**

> come say hey on my [tumblr](http://spideypetes.tumblr.com).
> 
> like my writing? buy my first book [here!](https://www.amazon.com/dp/1983447617/ref=sr_1_1?ie=UTF8&qid=1531446109&sr=8-1&keywords=women+of+questionable+morals)


End file.
